"To
initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime, it is the
supreme international crime. . . .” --
Robert H. Jackson, Chief U.S. Prosecutor, Nuremberg
Military Tribunal

What are the causes, consequences, and cures of the US
empire? Specifically: What are the causes and what the cures for
the hostility between NK and US?
Clearer thinking is possible when we return to the original name of the
WAR DEPARTMENT.

What’s at Stake:

J. William Fulbright during the height of the Cold War attempted to extend his Exchange Program to the Soviet Union,
but his plan to acquire a part of WWII Lend Lease money the Russians were
repaying was scuttled by US Sovietphobes, esp. by Senator “Scoop” Jackson of
Washington State. But aren’t some
nations Evil? What aboutPresident Bush’s “Axis of Evil”? “The depiction of [the Soviet
Union] as evil releases some of our worst, not our best,
qualities.” J. William Fulbright, The Price of Empire (199). Another Arkansas native, Betty Bumpers, wife of then Senator
Bumpers, created the women’s organization, Peace Links, to exchange women from
the US and Russia and other countries.
Today we urgently need direct nonviolent citizen contact with “enemy”
nations, including particularly exchanges with all nations our leaders perceive
to be “evil.”

In the long run, Richard Seymour writes, “It has been a mainstay of this
book that successful antiwar movements are those that have been able to make direct links with those in the flight
path of US aggression and to bring their struggles and concerns directly
into the US political arena. Indeed,
direct comprehension of their urgent struggles has often been a radicalizing
factor in antiwar campaigns.”” American Insurgents: A Brief History of
American Anti-Imperialism (2012), p. 193.
After decades of unceasing hostility by the US toward Iran, finally our government changed
course and Secretary Kerrry negotiated a peace plan. We should be trying to do the same with North Korea, instead of threatening
nuclear war. How many of you know why the leaders of NK might be so suspicious
and hostile? Do you know the history of
the Japanese occupation? Do you know how
many cities the US levelled during the Korean War? Can you name the cities? Do you know the name of even one NK civilian
killed during the bombings? Let us do all we can to imagine the lives of
the leaders and people labeled our “enemy,” if we are to have the empathy necessary
to enable us at last to create amity between us.

Contents North Korea Newsletters Nos. 1 and 2 at end

Contents North Korea Newsletter #3

Peace Movement Teaching History and Striving for Empathy
and Peace, Not
Preparing for War

Who Is threatening
whom? Who is endangering the world? The
Zeese and Flowers essay offers an introduction and confirmation of the thesis
that the US is the problem. For a
rationale for not also presenting the Pentagon complex’s perspective see my
essay “National Power and Objectivity in the Classroom,” College English (December 1989) 805-824.

NK Newsletter
#3 is mostly organized chronologically to remind us, even though it is a small
sample, of the depth and duration of US peace perspectives. That they have been generally invisible we
can attribute to US mainstream media alignment with official doctrine of NK
Evil.

Glenn Greenwald, Reading North Korea in US MEDIA

Reading North Korea in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by Dick Bennett. Reports by newspapers like the AD-G reflect a national mainstream perspective because this
newspaper employs both signed articles and articles drawn from other mainstream
media compiled by AD-G staff. I have
not analyzed (given an alternative account for) all of the reports, but I
wanted to show the uniformity of the larger sample. Analyzed reports are indicated by an
asterisk.

US
political leaders and media pundits trumpet North Korea's recent testing of
missiles and nuclear weapons as a great threat. But the US mass media do not
tell the whole story. Without the context of history and current events, the
actions of North Korea look insane, but when put in context we find that the
United States is pushing North Korea on this path. North Korea is really not a significant threat compared to what the
United States is doing with nuclear weapons, the Asia Pivot and war games off
the Korean coast. In this article, we seek greater understanding by putting
ourselves in the place of North Korea.

Historical Context: Korea, a Pawn
for Big Power, Brutalized by the United States

The history between Korea and the United States
goes back to the late 1800s when the US had completed its manifest destiny
across North America and was beginning to build a global empire. In 1871, more than 700 US marines and sailors landed on
Kanghwa beachin west
Korea, seeking to begin US colonization (a smaller US invasion occurred in
1866). Theydestroyed five forts, inflictingas many as 650 Korean casualties. TheUS withdrew, realizing
it would need a much larger force to succeed, but this was the largest military
force to land outside the Americas until the 1898 war in the Philippines.S. Brian Willson reportsthat this invasion is still discussed
in North Korea, but it has been erased from the history in South Korea as well
as in the United States.

Korea succumbed to Japanese rule beginning in
1905, often serving as a pawn between Japanese conflicts with China and Russia.
This was a brutal occupation. A major revolt for Korean democracy occurred on
March 1, 1919, when a declaration of independence was read in Seoul. Two million
Koreans participated in 1,500 protests. The Koreans also appealed to major
powers meeting in Versailles after World War I, but were ignored as Japan was
given control over the East. The Japanese viciously put down the democracy
movement.Iggy
Kim, in Green Left,reports
they "beheaded children, crucified Christians and carried out scores of
other atrocities. More than 7,500 people were killed and 16,000 were
injured."

Near the end of World War II, as Japan was
weakened, Korean "People's Committees" formed all over the country
and Korean exiles returned from China, the US and Russia to prepare for
independence and democratic rule. OnSeptember 6, 1945, these
disparate forces and representatives of the people's committees proclaimed a
Korean People's Republic (the KPR) with a progressive agenda of land reform,
rent control, an eight-hour work day and minimum wage among its 27-point
program.

But the KPR was prevented from becoming a
reality. Instead, after World War II and without Korean representation, the USquite arbitrarilydecided with Russia, China and
England, to divide Korea into two nations "temporarily" as part of
its decolonization. The powers agreed that Japan should lose all of its
colonies and that in "due course" Korea would be free. Korea was
divided on the 38th parallel. The US made sure to keep the capital,
Seoul, and key ports. Essentially, the US took as much of Korea as it
thought the Russians would allow. Thisdivision planted the seeds of the
Korean War, causing a five-year revolution and counter-revolution
that escalated into the Korean War.

Initially, the South Koreanswelcomed the United States, but USGen. John Hodge, the military governor of
South Korea working under Gen. Douglas MacArthur, quickly brought Koreans who
had cooperated with the Japanese during occupation into the government and shut
out Koreans seeking democracy. He refused to meet with representatives of the
KPR and banned the party, working instead with the right wing Korean Democratic
Party - made up of landlords, land owners, business interests and pro-Japanese
collaborators.

Shut out of politics, Koreans who sought an
independent democratic state took to other methods and a mass uprising
occurred. Astrike against the railroadsin September 1946 by8,000
railway workers in Pusan quickly grew into a general strike of workers and
studentsin all of the
South's major cities. The US military arrested strike leaders en masse. In
Taegu, on Oct. 1, huge riots occurred after police smashed picket lines and
fired into a crowd of student demonstrators, killing three and wounding scores.
In Yongchon, on Oct. 3, 10,000 people attacked the police station and killed
more than 40 police, including the county chief. Some 20 landlords and
pro-Japanese officials were also killed. A few days later, the US
military declared martial law to crush the uprising. They fired into large
crowds of demonstrators in numerous cities and towns, killing and wounding an
unknown number of people.

Syngman Rhee, an exile who had lived in the US
for 40 years, was returned to Korea on MacArthur's personal plane. He initially
allied with left leaders to form a government approved of by the US. Then in
1947, he dispensed with his "left" allies by assassinating their
leaders, Kim Ku and Kim Kyu-Shik. Rhee consolidated power andthe
US pushed for United Nations-sponsored electionsin May 1948 to put a legal imprimatur
on the divided Koreas. Rhee was elected at 71 years old in an election
boycotted by most parties who saw it as sham. He came to power in the midst of
an insurgency.

OnJeju Island, the largest Korean island lying
in a strategic location in the Korea Strait, there continued to be protests
against the US military government. It was one of the last areas where people's
committees continued to exist. Gen.Hodge told CongressJeju was "a truly communal area
that is peacefully controlled by the People's Committee," but he organized
its extermination in a scorched-earth attack. In September, Rhee's new
government launched a massive counterinsurgency operation under US command.
S. Brian Willson reportsit resulted in the killing of
"60,000 Islanders, with another 40,000 desperately fleeing in boats to
Japan. Thus, one-third of its residents were either murdered or fled during the
'extermination' campaign. Nearly 40,000 homes were destroyed and 270 of 400
villages were leveled." It wasan
ugly attack, Iggy Kim notes: "Torture, mutilation, gang rape
and arbitrary execution were rife. . . a quarter of the Jeju population had
been massacred. The US embassy happily reported: 'The all-out guerilla
extermination campaign came to a virtual end in April with order restored and
most rebels and sympathizers killed, captured, or converted.'" This wasthe single greatest massacre in modern Korean historyand a warning of what was to come in
the Korean War. As we will see, Jeju is part of the story in today's US Asian
escalation.

More brutality occurred on mainland Korea. OnOctober
19, dissident soldiers in the port city of Yosurose up in opposition to the war in
Jeju. About 2,000 insurgent soldiers took control of the city. By Oct. 20, a
number of nearby towns had also been liberated and the People's Committee was
reinstated as the governing body. People's courts were established to try
police officers, landlords, regime officials and other supporters of the Rhee
dictatorship. This rebellion was suppressed by a bloodletting, planned and
directed by the US military.

"The Korean War that lasted from June 1950 to July 1953 was an enlargement
of the 1948-50 struggle of Jeju Islanders to preserve their self-determination
from the tyrannical rule of US-supported Rhee and his tiny cadre of wealthy
constituents. Little known is that the US-imposed division of Korea in 1945
against the wishes of the vast majority of Koreans was the primary cause of the
Korean War that broke out five years later. The War destroyed by bombing most
cities and villages in Korea north of the 38th Parallel, and many south of it,
while killing four million Koreans – three million (one-third) of the north's
residents and one million of those living in the south, in addition to killing
one million Chinese. This was a staggering international crime still
unrecognized that killed five million people and permanently separated 10
million Korean families."

Bragging about the massacre, USAF Strategic Air
Command head General Curtis LeMay, who blanket-bombed Japan in World War II and
later ran for vice president with segregationist George Wallace, summedit
up well, "Over a period of three years or so we killed off -
what - twenty percent of the population." Willson corrects LeMay, writing "it is
now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly
a third its population of 8-9 million people during the 37-month long 'hot'
war, 1950-1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by
one nation due to belligerence of another."

This historical context results in North Korea
taking the threats of the United States very seriously. It knows the US has
been willing to kill large portions of its population throughout history and
has seen what the US has done to other countries.

In 2002, President George W. Bush labeled North
Korea part of the "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran. S. Brian Willson traveled900 ground miles through six of North
Korea's nine provinces, as well as Pyongyang, the capital, and several other
cities, talking with dozens of people from all walks of life; all wanted to
know about the "axis of evil" speech. He found that North
Koreans "simply cannot understand why the US is so obsessed with
them."

Of course, the North Korean government
witnessed the "shock and awe" campaign of bombardments against Iraq
and the killing of at least hundreds of thousands (credible research showsmore than 1 million Iraqis killed, 4.5
million displaced, 1-2 million widows and 5 million orphans). They saw the
brutal killing by hanging of the former US ally, now turned into an enemy,
Saddam Hussein.
And, they can look to the experience of Libya. Libya was an enemy but then began
to develop positive relations with the US. In 2003, Libya halted its program to
build a nuclear bomb in an effort to mend its relations with the US. Then
last year Libya was overthrown in a US-supported war and its leaderMoammar Gadhafiwas brutally killed. AsReuters reports, "'The tragic
consequences in those countries which abandoned halfway their nuclear
programs... clearly prove that the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea)
was very far-sighted and just when it made the (nuclear) option,' North Korea's
KCNA news agency said."

The United States stations 28,500 troops in
South Korea. InNovember 2012 the US upgraded its weapons systems and
announced an agreement with Japanthat
would allow South Korea to bomb anywhere in North Korea. In June 2012 the
Pentagon announced that Gen.l Neil H. Tolley would be removed as commander of
US Special Operations in South Korea after he revealed to a Japanese foreign
affairs publication thatAmerican and South Korean troops had been parachuting
into North Koreaon
spy missions.
US troops and bases are not popular.Protests erupted in 2002after two Korean woman were killed and
a court martial found the US soldiers not guilty of negligent manslaughter.
Several pubs and restaurants put up signs saying "Americans Not
Welcome Here." In anAugust 2005 protestagainst US troops by 1,100 people, 10
were injured by police. One month before that, 100 were injured in a protest.
In2006 protesters occupied landon which the US planned to expand a
base, resulting in a conflict and their eviction followed by installing barbed
wire around the area to protect it from South Koreans. The South Korean
government banned a rally that was expected to draw more than 10,000
protesters.

• South
Korean officials began talking of Kim Jong-il's death as a prime opportunity to
pursue a regime-change strategy.

• South
Korea unveiled a new cruise missile that could launch a strike inside North
Korea and is working fast to increase its full-battery range to strike anywhere
inside North Korea.

• South
Korea openly began discussing asymmetric warfare against North Korea.

• The US
military's Key Resolve Foal Eagle computerized war simulation games suddenly
changed, too, simulating the deployment of 100,000 South Korean troops on North
Korean territory following a regime change.

• Japan was
brought on board, allowing the US to deploy a second advanced missile defense
radar system on its territory and the two carried out unprecedented war games.

• It is
also not lost on anyone that despite what on the surface appears to be the US'
complete lack of interest in a new South Korean naval base that is in the
works, this base will essentially serve as an integrated missile defense system
run by the US military and housing Aegis destroyers."

North Korea has shown anger at these drills.
In response to the announcement of the largest annual joint exercisesfor US and South Korean troops
scheduled for March and April of this year,in a rare direct messageto US Gen. James Thurman, North Korea
warned the top American commander in South Korea on Feb. 23 of "miserable
destruction" if the US military presses ahead with the joint drills with
South Korea set to begin next month.

Add to these drills the "Asia Pivot"
President Obama is implementing, which will result in 60 percent of the US Navy
being moved to Asia, and one can understand why North Korea believes that it is
necessary to have nuclear weapons. Part of this Asia Pivot includesJeju Island, where the US military is trying to install a
massive Navy base. The village of Gangjeong, where the base is
to be built, and the elected assembly of Jeju Island have voted to stop the
naval base construction. The people of Jeju have mountedprotests and resistanceefforts against the base. But the base
is a key location for the Asia Pivot. Jeju faces Shanghai across the East
China Sea, the South China Sea lies south of the island, and the mainland of
South Korea lies to the north.

Beyond that, asS. Brian Willson points out, the US is
remaking its nuclear arsenal so that nuclear weapons can be used in a war.
Three weeks before his "Axis of Evil" speech, President Bush
presented a "Nuclear Posture Review" report to Congress that ordered
the Pentagon to prepare contingency plans for use of nuclear weapons. The first
designated targets for nuclear attack were the "axis of evil" members
- along with Syria, Libya, Russia, and China. The US remains the only
country to have used nuclear weapons against another nation. TheUS has approximately 5,113 nuclear warheads,
including tactical, strategic, and non-deployed weapons. According to the
latest official New START Treaty declaration, the United States actively
positions 1,722 strategic nuclear warheads on 806 deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and
strategic bombers.

While calling for a world without nuclear
weapons, PresidentObama has instead continued Bush's plan and has
increased the budget for nuclear weapons. He has been giving the
nuclear arsenal a massive and costly overhaul, modernizing the land-sea-air
combination of planes, submarines and missiles that deliver nuclear bombs and
warheads. Obama made a commitment in a letter to the Senate in February 2011 to
accelerate, "to the extent possible," the design and engineering of a
new plutonium facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico
while sustaining a facility in Tennessee. What would a North Korean
leader think of all this?

And when it comes to talks with North Korea,
there is no progress. Asour guests on
"Clearing the FOG" - Bruce Gagnon and Elliot Adams, both
active withVeterans
for Peace- pointed
out: China encourages talks, but the US refuses. Gagnon and Adams suggest
a first step would be a peace treaty with North Korea - an end to the Korean
War, something that was never agreed because the fighting ended in a truce. The
US needs to stop boxing North Korea into a corner with escalating rhetoric,
military actions off its coast and crippling sanctions, and allow North Korea
into the community of nations.

Once again, Korea is a pawn in a bigger battle
between the US and China and Russia. Countries like Australia and Japan have
joined the US and NATO, which has also been brought into the Asian Pivot. As
Gagnon points out, North Korea is very independent and does not want to be
anyone's puppet and feels it must always show it is ready to defend itself.
Adams adds, the US military does not fear "pipsqueak" North Korea
with their low tech missiles and bombs, but in the media they use every test by
North Korea as an excuse to escalate. Adams clarifies, "the US military
needs a bogeyman to justify spending 60 percent of US discretionary spending on
an insane, incompetent and bloated military."

The solution begins with the American people
understanding what is really going on in Asia and the Koreas. When the context
is examined, and Americans try to stand in the shoes of North Korea, a
different picture emerges. This is not easy with the misinformation and
inadequate reporting by the mass media, which is complicit with the escalation,
but this contextual understanding is essential as the US increases military
action in Asia, threatens China and uses North Korea as an excuse.

You can hear our interview with
Bruce Gagnon and Elliott Adams on North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and US Expansion
into Asia and Space onClearing the
FOG Radio(podcast).

SWANSON

There will always, always, always be another North Korea that's supposedly about to
kill us. We don't need rapid-response fact corrections. We need
citizens with some understanding of history, with knowledge of the Other 95%,
with the capacity to resist terrorism-by-television, and capable of independent
thought. To get there, we need a peace movement that moves us, at whatever
pace it can, toward peace -- toward the popular demand for the absolute
abolition of all war

North
Korea’s Justifiable Anger

by STANSFIELD SMITH, Counterpunch, April 10, 2013

The corporate media reduces the DPRK (North Korea) to the Kim family and
prefaces their names with the terms “madman”, “evil” and “brutal”. Such
vilifications of foreign leaders are used here not only to signify they are
target for US
overthrow. They are meant to intimidate and isolate anti-war
activists as being out in left field for ever wanting to oppose a war against
countries ruled by “madmen” – be they Saddam, Fidel, Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad,
Qaddaffi.

Yet to a sensible person, it is crazy that the US, with nuclear
weapons thousands of miles from home, in South Korea, denies North Korea has a
right to have its own nuclear weapons on its own land – particularly when the
North says it is developing nuclear weapons only as a deterrent because the US
won’t take its own weapons out of the Korean peninsula.

Missing in what passes for discourse on the DPRK in the corporate
media is that the US was
conducting month-long war maneuvers last March in Korea, now extended into April,
using stealth bombers, undetectable by radar, capable of carrying nuclear
weapons. And this year these are not “deterrent” war maneuvers, but
“pre-emptive war” maneuvers.

Would the US government and people get a little “irrational” if a
foreign country that previously had killed millions of our people, sent nuclear
capable stealth bombers off the coasts of New York City, Washington DC,
Houston, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, there to fly around for a month in
preparation for a possible nuclear attack on us? For what is called, in warped US language,
war “games”?

The US may have
killed 20% of the population of Korea,
said General Curtis Lemay, who was involved in the US
air war on Korea.
If so, that is a higher rate of genocidal slaughter than what the Nazis
inflicted on Poland or the Soviet Union. The Korean War may be unknown ancient
history to us, but it is no more ancient history to Koreans than the Nakba is
to Palestinians.

North Korea knows that history, and it
is warning the US
they know what to expect and are arming themselves to prevent it. Are the DPRK
leaders “paranoid” or taking justifiable precautions?

What kind of deranged people call war preparations a “war game”? North Korea
doesn’t think it’s a “game.” Over 4 million died in the last war to reunify
their country that the US
divided. If men had an annual rite called “group rape games” wouldn’t we think
it a criminal misogynist pathology, and wouldn’t women be justified in being
outraged and arming themselves in self-defense?

An accurate reading of the
events leading up to the present situation shows that North Korea is responding
to US military escalation, and in particular to US refusal to negotiate. This includes a peace
treaty to end the Korean War, any steps towards reunifying Korea, the end to the US
occupation of South Korea
and ending the annual month-long US-South Korean war maneuvers. Even today, it includes
US
refusal to talk in order to lower the tensions.

North Korea was hit with US/UN Security
Council sanctions for a missile launch last year. South Korea sent off a missile this
year; were there any sanctions?

Since World War II there have been 9000 missile launches. 4 were
by the DPRK. There have been 2000 atomic bomb tests. 3 were by DPRK. No country
was sanctioned by the UN Security Council for this. No country except the DPRK.
Why wouldn’t the North Koreans be incensed by this double standard, especially
when the US has nuclear
weapons in South Korea?

The US kill rate in the 1950-53 Korean War equaled more than one
9-11 every day, day after day, for the whole 1100 day war. US people had a scar
from one 9-11. So what kind of war scars do Koreans have?

Korea is divided because our
country invaded and divided it after the Japanese surrender. The leaders of the
DPRK had been fighting the Japanese since the early 1930s, and 200,000 had lost
their lives. When Korean liberation was at hand in 1945, the US intervened
and blocked it.

The US was
supposed to leave in 1948, along with the Soviet Union, but because Kim Il Sung
was likely to win planned nation-wide elections, the US
made the division permanent and blocked national elections, just as it did later
in Vietnam.
This lead to the Korean War, the cause of the present militarization: A foreign
country divided and occupied their country against their will.

We should play our part to improve the human rights situation in Korea, not only
in the North but in the South as well. Both societies are more closed and
controlled than our own. Whether being occupied by foreign troops, threatened
with war and war maneuvers, or subjected to harsh economic sanctions, this does
not facilitate free and open societies.

If we really want more rights for the people of the DPRK then we
should stop pointing a gun at their head. If we listened to Kim Jong Un’s
message delivered a month ago, ignored by President Obama, “We don’t want war.
Let’s talk,” that would only foster a more open society there – and in South
Korea, just as we know it would here in the US.

Stansfield Smithisan anti-war and Latin
America solidarity activist in Chicago who
recently returned from a trip to North Korea
[Democratic PeoplesRepublic of Korea (DPRK)], with Koryo Tours.He can be reached at:stansfieldsmith@yahoo.com

If war breaks out there, the peoples of both parts of the
Peninsula will be terribly sacrificed, without benefit to all or either of
them. It would be unjust to forget that such a war would particularly affect
more than 70% of the population of the planet.

This is a good news. We urge VFP
chapters to hold peace vigils too.
Thanks,
VFP-KPC
-‘No
new Korean war’ is the message from Twin Cities peace vigilFightback
News, April 12, 2013

St Paul, MN - On a cold and rainy April 10, several dozen people joined a
Minneapolis-Saint Paul peace vigil to speak out against the danger of a new
Korean war.

Every Wednesday, a peace vigil is held on the Lake Street/Marshall Avenue
Bridge over the Mississippi River between Minneapolis
and Saint Paul.
Due
to the urgent situation in Korea,
the organizers of the vigil designated
April 10 as a day to focus on the crisis with an anti-war response.

Participants held signs as busy rush hour traffic went by. Many people
waved and honked their car horns in support of the anti-war message.

Signs carried by participants included slogans such as: “No new Korean
War,” No U.S. war in Korea,” and “Stop war games in Korea,” referring to
the ongoing war games conducted by the U.S. and south Korea. Another sign
read, “Say no to war – let DPRK live.” DPRK is the Democratic Peoples
Republic of Korea,
the name of the northern Korean state.

Women Against Military Madness End War Committee and the Twin Cities Peace
Campaign organize the weekly vigil.

On short notice, several other organizations signed on to the call for the
April 10 vigil to respond to the Korea crisis and helped publicize
the
event. Groups endorsing the event included Anti-War Committee, Emergency
Committee to Stop U.S. War in Korea,
Minnesota Peace Action Coalition and
Veterans for Peace.

A statement issued by organizers says in part, “The Korean peninsula is at
a flash point. U.S. war
games, including sending nuclear bombers on a
mission simulating the bombing of North Korea,
only serve to bring Korea
to
the brink of a new war. We call for an end to the U.S.
war games, for theU.S. to make a peace treaty
to end the Korean War, and for an end to the
sanctions on North Korea.”

At the end of the vigil participants gathered to hear brief remarks from
organizers.

Chris
Getowicz of the University of Minnesota chapter of Students for a
Democratic Society said, “The government and the media in the U.S. continue
to beat the war drums of agitation on the Korean peninsula. The government
and media are building and maintaining the myth of North Korean hostility,
when it is in fact the U.S.
military presence that has maintained a divided
Korean peninsula for 60 years. It is U.S.
imperialism that has provoked
hostilities on the Korean peninsula and we must challenge the notion that
anyone other than the U.S.
is maintaining a militarized and divided Korea.”

The following 7 entries from 2013 discuss US
violent threats intended to stop NK’s missile test. NK argues they possess the right to test
missiles as much as the US (from Vandenburg to Kwajalein), and they must test
and succeed if they are to defend themselves from attack like the US invasions
of Afghanistan and Iraq. --Dick

American F-22 stealth warplanes arrived in South Korea yesterday, placing East Asia on
hair-trigger alert as Washington escalated its
confrontation with North
Korea, ostensibly over the country’s nuclear
program

Over the weekend, US officials continued to
threaten North Korea with
war, demanding that China
cut off its support to the regime in Pyongyang.
This comes after weeks of US threats aimed at Pyongyang’s nuclear program,
during which Washington flew nuclear-capable bombers to Korea to demonstrate
its capacity to wage nuclear war against the North.

US
Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in the South Korean capital, Seoul, yesterday on the first leg of a three-nation East
Asian tour dominated by escalating US threats against North Korea over its nuclear
program. Kerry arrives for talks today in China
and is traveling on to Japan
tomorrow. http://www.countercurrents.org/

[From a 2016 perspective of the
successful nuclear agreement with Iran, Kerry seems to have developed from a
typical US warrior to a statesman using all the tools of diplomacy to avoid war
and danger of war. –Dick]

Far from attempting to lower temperatures on
the KoreanPeninsula, the Obama administration has
been deliberately stoking the crisis. Over the past month, the Pentagon has
flown nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 strategic bombers to South Korea to send a message to Pyongyang, and its ally Beijing,
that the US is capable of
destroying North Korea’s
military and industrial infrastructure.
http://www.countercurrents.org/

Unnamed officials in the US Department of
Defense announced today that they are “highly confident” that North Korea
intends the imminent launch of a medium-range missile, according to NBC News.
This statement follows two days of speculation in the world press that
Pyongyang would order the launch of a Musudan missile from its east coast by
April 10—a deadline that has now passed

This dictator in North
Korea, while he may not realize it, is laying right into America’s
hands. He has probably done more for the defense industry in the United States
than any publicity they could have imagined

Fears of war remained high on the Korean
peninsula, amid continuing military exercises by both the United States and North
Korea, after revelations Thursday that the crisis was
following a “playbook” of US
escalations prepared months ago by the Obama administration

2015

Support US Nuclear Diplomacy with
North Korea and Give Peace a Chance!

The US should negotiate with
North Korea on its proposal to cancel nuclear tests in exchange for a US suspension
of joint military exercises with South Korea.Click here to sign the petition.

The North Korean (DPRK)
government disclosed on January 10 that it had delivered to the United States
an important proposal to “create a peaceful climate on the Korean Peninsula.

This year, we observe the 70thanniversary of the tragic division
of Korea in 1945. The US government played a major role in the arbitrary
division of the country, as well as in the horrific Korean civil war of
1950-53, wreaking catastrophic devastation on North Korea, with millions of
Korean deaths as well as the deaths of 50,000 American soldiers. The US still
keeps nearly 30,000 troops in South Korea today, even though the Armistice
Agreement was signed in 1953.

According to KCNA, the North
Korean news agency, the DPRK’s message stated that if the United States
“contribute(s) to easing tension on the Korean Peninsula by temporarily
suspending joint military exercises in South Korea and its vicinity this
year,” then “the DPRK is ready to take such responsive steps as temporarily suspending
the nuclear test over which the US is concerned.”

Unfortunately, it is reported
that the US State Department rejected the offer immediately, claiming that
the two issues are separate. Such a quick spurning of the North’s proposal is
not only arrogant but also violates one of the basic principles of the United
Nations Charter, which requires of its members to “settle their international
disputes by peaceful means.” To reduce the dangerous military tensions on the
Korean Peninsula today, it is urgent that the two hostile States engage in
mutual dialogue and negotiation for a peaceful settlement of the lingering
Korean War, without any preconditions.

The winter US-ROK (South Korea)
war drill usually takes place in late February. On such occasions in the past
DPRK has put its troops on high military alert and conducted its own war
drills in response. Pyongyang regards the large-scale joint war drills as a
US rehearsal for military attacks, including nuclear strikes, against North
Korea. In last year’s drill, the US flew in B-2 stealth bombers, which can
drop nuclear bombs, as well as bringing in US troops from abroad. These
threatening moves not only provoke the North but also violate the Korean War
Armistice Agreement of 1953.

Instead of intensifying further
sanctions and military pressures against the DPRK, the Obama administration
should accept the recent offer from the North in good faith, and engage in
negotiations to reach positive agreements to reduce military tensions on the
Korean Peninsula.

It
is high time for the American people to heal the old wounds in Korea by
ending the lingering Korean War with a peace treaty, so that the Korean
people can also enjoy, at last, their basic human rights to peace,
self-determination, and development. The least the United States can do now
is to accept the North’s moratorium offer and enter into talks. Stop
demonizing the DPRK and start engaging it for the sake of peace in Korea,
Northeast Asia, and the world.

All we are saying, is give peace
a chance!If you
appreciate receiving timely action alerts like this,please make a donation to UFPJso that we can continue to keep our member groups and
dedicated activists linked together for effective action and impact!!

North Korea
cheered this month when a man with a knife and a history of violent behavior
slashed the face of Mark Lippert, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea. The
attack in Seoul was “a knife shower of justice,” North Korea said,
praising it as “deserved punishment for warmonger United States.”

If that
sounds mean-spirited, consider this: For years, North Korea has taught
schoolchildren to bayonet effigies of U.S. soldiers. Under its young dictator,
Kim Jong Un, the government has suggested it was prepared to nuke Washington,
Austin and Southern California. More than 40 years ago, Kim Il Sung,
the “Great Leader” who founded the family dictatorship that rules North Korea,
said there was “no secret” about his country’s behavior: “What is most
important in our preparations [for war] is to educate all the people to hate
U.S. imperialism.”

Where does
the hate come from?

Much of it
is cooked up daily in Pyongyang. Like all dictatorial regimes, the Kim family
dynasty needs an endless existential struggle against a fearsome enemy. Such a
threat rationalizes massive military spending and excuses decades of privation,
while keeping dissenting mouths shut and political prisons open.

The hate,
though, is not all manufactured. It is rooted in a fact-based narrative, one
that North Korea obsessively remembers and the United States blithely forgets.

The story
dates to the early 1950s, when the U.S. Air Force, in response to the North
Korean invasion that started the Korean War, bombed and napalmed cities, towns
and villages across the North. It was mostly easy pickings for the Air Force,
whose B-29s faced little or no opposition on many missions.

The bombing
was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own
leaders. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent
of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air
Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984.
Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United
States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on
top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed
hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland
and destroying crops.

Although
the ferocity of the bombing was criticized as racist and unjustified elsewhere
in the world, it was never a big story back home. U.S. press coverage of the
air war focused, instead, on “MiG alley,” a narrow patch of North Korea near
the Chinese border. There, in the world’s first jet-powered aerial war,
American fighter pilots competed against each other to shoot down five or more
Soviet-made fighters and become “aces.” War reporters rarely mentioned civilian
casualties from U.S. carpet-bombing. It is perhaps the most forgotten part of a
forgotten war.

The Kims,
though, have kept memories of the war and the bombing terrifyingly fresh. North
Korean state media dress up the historical record in a Big Lie, claiming that
Americans and South Korea sneakily started the Korean War and that Kim Il Sung
brilliantly won it against overwhelming odds. (The Chinese don’t get much
credit for fighting the United States to a draw.) State media warn that, sooner
or later, the Americans will strike again.

“It is
still the 1950s in North Korea and the conflict with South Korea and the United
States is still going on,” says Kathryn Weathersby, a scholar of the Korean
War. “People in the North feel backed into a corner and threatened.”

There is
real value in understanding this paranoid mind-set. It puts the calculated
belligerence of the Kim family into context. It also undermines the notion that
North Korea is merely a nut-case state.

Since World
War II, the United States has engaged in an almost unbroken chain of major and
minor wars in distant and poorly understood countries. Yet for a meddlesome
superpower that claims the democratic high ground, it can sometimes be
shockingly incurious and self-absorbed. In the case of the bombing of North Korea,
its people never really became conscious of a major war crime committed in
their name.

Paying attention in a democracy is a
moral obligation. It is also a way to avoid repeating immoral mistakes.

And if
North Korea ever does change, if the Kim family were overthrown or were to
voluntarily loosen its chokehold on information, a U.S. apology for the bombing could help dispel 65 years of hate.

International Peacemakers
Announce Women’s Walk for Peace and Reunification of Korea

NEW YORK, NY - During the 59th
United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meeting, leading global
women peacemakers will announce their plans for a women’s peace walk calling
for an end to the Korean War, which is technically unresolved without a peace
treaty. Millions of Korean families remain separated as both Koreas live in a
state of war. Gloria Steinem, Abigail Disney, Ann Wright, Suzy Kim, Keum-ok
Kim, Hyun-Kyung Chung and Christine Ahn will speak.

What: Announcement of
International Peacemakers’ Walk for Peace in Korea

In May 2015, international
women peacemakers will travel to Korea to meet with women leaders to embark
upon a peace-building initiative to formally end the Korean War, including the
launch of a global petition urging signatories of the 1953 armistice agreement
to replace the cease-fire with a permanent peace treaty.

The delegation includes two
Nobel Peace Laureates, Mairead Maguire from Northern Ireland and Leymah Gbowee
from Liberia, and women leaders from over a dozen countries, many of which
participated in the 1950-53 Korean War. At the press briefing, representatives
of the women’s peace delegation will give an update on the governments’ approval
to cross the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ, that separates the two Koreas) on May
24th, International Disarmament Day.

Gloria Steinem, renowned
American author and Honorary Co-Chair of the international delegation, says “If
this division can be healed even briefly by women, it will be inspiring in the
way that women brought peace out of war in Northern Ireland or Liberia. In
Northern Ireland women crossed the boundary of religion and region, and said,
‘No more’. For generations, the divisions seemed inevitable but women managed
to cross it and now Ireland is a peaceful country.”

Suzy Kim, professor of Korean
history at Rutgers University, explains, “Known as the Forgotten War, the
Korean War claimed 4 million lives, mostly Korean civilians. The brinkmanship
we witness today, from war games to nuclear weapons, stem from that historic
fact that a peace treaty was never signed.”

“American women have a very
important role to play in this, not as people who dictate the solutions, but
because of the role our country played in drawing the line and now very
aggressively plays in enforcing it,” says the award-winning American filmmaker
and philanthropist, Abigail Disney.

According to retired U.S. Army
Colonel Ann Wright, “My government should support the peaceful reunification of
the two Koreas by de-escalating military tensions. Although both sides claim
defense, when there is no communication and just a show of force, the chances
for “miscalculation” are unimaginably high and very dangerous. We need to
de-escalate tensions, engage North Korea in talks, and sign a peace treaty.”

“We are collaborating with the
international women to mobilize Korean women,” says Keum-ok Kim, Standing
Representative of Korean Women’s Association United, the largest umbrella
organization of South Korean women’s NGOs.

Christine Ahn, one of the
organizers, says, “We are walking to unite Korean families tragically separated
by an artificial, man-made division, and to re-direct government investment
away from the military towards improving the welfare of the people, in
particular women, children and the elderly.”

Aug 25, 2015 -South and North Korea agree dealto reduce tensions... Both Koreas used to routinely blast
propagandaacrosstheir shared border, but agreed in 2004 to
abandon the tactic. ...North
and South Koreain second
night of talks.

Aug 25, 2015 -North,South
Koreareach agreement to ease
tensions ... SEOULNorth
and South Koreaagreed
early on Tuesday to end a ... so as to easetensions betweenSouth and North," Park's presidential
office quoted her as saying.

Veterans For Peace Calls upon
U.S. to Reduce Military Tensions in Korea

Veterans For Peace, a
major peace organization of veterans in the U.S., welcomed the announcement on
Tuesday, August 25th of an inter-Korean agreement to de-escalate the current
military tensions in Korea.

Among the items agreed to, the South agreed to stop its anti-North propaganda
broadcasts in the DMZ, while the North agreed to end its “semi-state of war.”<Full Statement>

Global
Research, August 04, 2013 ... But during my 8 days inNorth Korea, I had very few moments
of silence, almost no opportunity to reflect. ... But I fell in love, instantly
with theNorth
Koreancountryside, and the faces
ofNorth
Korean ...

5 days ago -North Koreasuffered overwhelming numbers of casualties.
Up to four million ... “North Korea'snuclear test is a blatant violation of its
international obligations. US joint ... Another Asian war could precipitate global
conflict – humanity's greatest threat. ... The original source of this article
isGlobal
Research.

Aug 22, 2015 -It presents aNorth
Koreanperspective of what is
happening on the ...Global Researchdoes not necessarily endorse the views
presented in this article. ... The situation of the Korean peninsula is inching
close to the brink of a ...

In response to
this week's reported nuclear test by the North Korean government, the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act of
2015 may now advance quickly in Congress. It contains provisions that if
enacted will severely restrict the very limited humanitarian operations still
underway to assist the people of North Korea.

The disengagement
enforced by current sanctions has decreased rather than enhanced the capacity
of the global community to impact policies of the North Korean government.
Further disengagement is not the answer.

Humanitarian assistance to North Korea helps those in need and keeps channels of
international engagement and dialogue with North Korea open.

The American
Friends Service Committee has worked in North Korea since the 1980s, with
relief efforts on the Korean Peninsula dating back to the years after the
Korean War. Our unique, historical understanding of peace building in the region
leads us to believe that the harmful provisions in the North Korea Sanctions
Enforcement Act of 2015 will greatly reduce already limited avenues toward more
peaceful relations on the Korean Peninsula.

Last
night, North Korea detonated a nuclear device at a known testing site in
the eastern part of the country. In an accompanying statement, the
government claimed to have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb.

In response, we already see a troubling narrative emerging: The world is
dangerous. Nuclear weapons keep us safe. We must cling to these arsenals
-- even race to upgrade them -- and accept them as the cornerstone of our
security.

All of that is flat wrong. Nuclear weapons anywhere are a threat to
people everywhere.What happened on the Korean
peninsula reinforces that our whack-a-mole approach to proliferation
won't work over the long run. From the Iranian
nuclear program to stolen nuclear material in Moldova1to confrontations between Russia
and the West2, we are trapped
in a cycle of nuclear crisis after nuclear crisis, each one a
dangerous roll of the dice.

We have to break
that cycle.And
we can. It requires a far more comprehensive approach -- one that brings
together key countries to eliminate all nuclear weapons and secure all
nuclear materials. And we’re working everyday to make that happen.

I know in moments like these, it’s easy to feel powerless. The nuclear
threat feels vast and we mistake ourselves as small.

But when it comes to eliminating nuclear weapons, you are more powerful
than you know. The challenge we face is political: It is a matter of
leaders acting with urgency and resolve. That’s exactly the sort of
obstacle movements like ours are built to overcome.

Friend, our greatest adversary is the lie that the world cannot change.It can. And we’re the ones to
change it.

2016

This policy of nuclear bombing of
targeted cities is still on the drawing board of the Pentagon. While today’s
list of targets remains classified, cities in Russia, China, the Middle East,
North Korea are on the target list.

In the
United States today, the term “terrorism” conjures up images of dangerous,
outside threats: religious extremists and suicide bombers in particular. Harder
to see but all the more pervasive is the terrorism perpetuated by the United
States, itself, whether through military force overseas or woven into the very
fabric of society at home. Henry Giroux, in this passionate and incisive book,
turns the conventional wisdom on terrorism upside down, demonstrating how fear
and lawlessness have become organizing principles of life in the United States,
and violence an acceptable form of social mediation. He addresses the most
pressing issues of the moment, from officially sanctioned torture to
militarized police forces to austerity politics. Giroux also examines the
ongoing degradation of the education system and how young people in particular
suffer its more nefarious outcomes.

Against this
grim picture, Giroux posits a politics of hope and a commitment to accurate—and
radical—historical memory. He draws on a long, distinguished career developing
the tenets of critical pedagogy to propose a cure for our addiction to terrorism: a
kind of “public pedagogy” that challenges the poisoned narratives of
“America’s disimagination machine.”

Praise for
the book:

In a career
marked by numerous thoughtful critiques of the existing order, Henry Giroux has
outdone himself with America’s Addiction to Terror. More than any other book,
Giroux chronicles the death spiral of contemporary U.S. capitalist society, and
why young people are on the verge of a revolt the likes of which has not been
seen for generations. We are very fortunate to have this book.—Robert W.
McChesney, co-author, People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and
a Citizenless Democracy

Henry Giroux
is one of the most brilliant analysts of the humanly destructive impact of
global capitalism as it plays itself out, not only in the economic sphere, but
in every aspect of daily life. His deeply insightful analysis of the way the
word ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ have been appropriated to advance militarist
worldviews should be read by every citizen in Western societies.—Rabbi Michael
Lerner, Editor, Tikkun Magazine, chair of the interfaith and
secular-humanist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives and author of The
Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right

Important,
compelling and incisive. Offering a different angle of vision on the question
‘What actually is terror?,’ Henry Giroux shows his courage and unique ability
to reveal the hidden order of politics. In doing so, not only does he expose
those modes of oppression and violence that are part of the everyday political
fabric of American society, he impresses the urgency of critical pedagogy—more
than simply a question of some ‘public good’—because lives depend upon it!—Brad
Evans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Bristol;
founder and director of the Histories of Violence project

Henry Giroux
is one of the singular intellects in contemporary life, a sane, compassionate,
and fierce voice against the society of domination, inequality and the madness
of ruthless Imperialist conquest.—John Steppling, playwright, screenwriter, and
essayist

America’s
Addiction to Terrorism catapults Henry Giroux as one of the most important
North American public intellectual voices in the tradition of Noam Chomsky and
the late Howard Zinn. While courageous in posture, Giroux effortlessly
demonstrates that the denouncement of the imperial desires, practices, and
violence perpetrated by the United States through the fabricated war on terror
narrative simply demands honesty—a coherent honesty which makes it clear that,
behind an act of violence in ‘retail terrorism,’ there is always a prior state
officially sanctioned violence. Giroux brilliantly and passionately unveils the
structural racism etched in the white American supremacist ethos that condones
the wanton killings of Black youth by white policemen with impunity by
deconstructing the ‘school-to-jail-to-grave pipeline’ which has become the main
principle that informs and deforms the anti-transformative corporate school
reforms. America’s Addiction to Terrorism is a must read for all citizens and
educators, particularly critical educators, as it challenges us all to go beyond
the crass careerism of neoliberal policies and walk the necessary talk of
educated hope, liberation, and human emancipation.—Donaldo Macedo,
Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education, University of
Massachusetts Boston

Henry A.
Giroux currently
holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in
the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting
Professorship at Ryerson University. A founding figure in the movement for
critical pedagogy and author of more than sixty books, including America’s
Education Deficit and the War on Youth, he is one of North America’s most
influential public intellectuals. He recently received a Lifetime Achievement
Award from the American Educational Research Association. Michael D. Yates is
Associate Editor of Monthly Review Magazine and Editorial Director of Monthly
Review Press.

North
Korea’s Peace Feelers, 2014-5

Congressional Research Service, 2015

NK to Send
Athletes and Cheering Squad to Asian Games—for Peace, 2014

NK’s
Military Visits SK, 2014

Koreas Agree
to More Talks, 2014

NK Offers to
Suspend Tests and Negotiate Drills, 2015

CONGRESSIONAL
RESEARCH SERVICE

This summary gives a chronology of US/NK
negotiations (or lack of ) from the US perspective of efforts to control and
alter “North Korea’s intransigence.” But NK insists upon recognition as a nuclear
state, a point of view not explained by the CRS report. That is, given the history of US nuclear
violence and belligerence, and its acceptance and even assistance to some
countries in developing their nuclear arsenal, NK demands its equal right to
nuclear development.

The solution is the elimination of all nuclear
weapons. The US should lead the way to
nuclear zero. Until then the planet is
in danger as proliferation inevitably grows.
See
OMNI’s nuclear weapons newsletters:

Compiled
by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.

(#1 August 29, 2012; #2 August 29, 2013; #3
August 29, 2014).

I randomly discovered
the following three items of NK peace initiatives which suggest possibilities
for peaceful relations and negotiations.
I could find no reports of follow-up. Our State Dept. should step out
front of the Pentagon with a large section of peacemakers ready to develop any
hopeful niche.

“North
Korea to Send Pep Squad to Games.”Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (July 7, 2014). NK will send
athletes and a cheering squad to the Asian Games in September, with the aim “to
promote reconciliation” and “to end hostility and mutual slandering.” The NK statement also asked SK to scrap their
military drills with “foreign forces” (US), which NK perceives to be “invasion
rehearsal.” --Dick

With No Sign
of Kim Jong-Un, a Top-Ranking General From North Korea Has Initiated Talks With
the SouthBBC News, Reader Supported
News, Oct. 4, 2014Excerpt: "North and South Korea have
agreed to resume formal high-level talks that had effectively been suspended
since February, reports from South Korea say."READ MORE

Anna Fifield (Reporting from Kyoto, Japan, Washington Post). “Koreas Agree to
More Talks After North Team Drops In.”Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette (Oct. 6, 2014). North Korean Leader Kim Jong
Un’s public disappearance for a month (he has not been seen since Sept. 3)
makes this surprise visit of possibly the 2nd and 3rd in
command in NK highly significant. ”This
is the highest level North Korean delegation to visit the South since
2009….” NK
has reached out recently around the world: Its foreign
minister spoke at the UN General Assembly last month and is now in Russia, and
it is holding talks with Japan over abductions of several decades ago. –Dick

North
Korea offers to suspend

nuclear
tests if U.S. suspends military drills

(Reuters) -NorthKoreasaid on Saturday it was willing to
suspend nuclear tests if the United States agreed to call off annual military
drills held jointly withSouth
Korea, but Washington rejected the
proposal as a veiled threat.

The offer, which the North's official KCNA news
agency said was conveyed to Washington on Friday through "a relevant
channel", follows an often repeated demand by Pyongyang for an end to the
large-scale defensive drills by the allies.

"The message proposed (that) the U.S.
contribute to easing tension on the Korean peninsula by temporarily suspending
joint military exercises inSouth
Koreaand its vicinity this
year," KCNA said in a report.

"(The message) said that in this case the
DPRK is ready to take such a responsive step as temporarily suspending the
nuclear test over which the U.S. is concerned," KCNA said, using the short
form for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the
nuclear tests and military exercises were separate issues.

"The DPRK statement that inappropriately
links routine US-ROK exercises to the possibility of a nuclear test byNorth Koreais an implicit threat," Psaki
told reporters traveling with Secretary of State John Kerry in Europe.

The United States andSouthKoreahave carried out the joint military
exercises for roughly 40 years, she added.

Psaki said the United States remained open to
dialogue withNorth Koreaand urged Pyongyang to
"immediately cease all threats, reduce tensions, and take the necessary
steps toward denuclearization needed to resume credible negotiations."

North Koreahas
conducted three nuclear tests, the last in February 2013, and is under U.N.
sanctions for defying international warnings not to set off atomic devices in
pursuit of a nuclear arsenal, which Pyongyang calls its "sacred
sword".

It often promises to call off nuclear and missile
tests in return for comparable steps by Washington to ease tensions. It reached
such a deal in February 2012 with the United States for an arms tests
moratorium only to scrap it two months later.

The United States andSouth Koreahave stressed that the annual drills,
which in some years involved U.S. aircraft carriers, are purely defensive in
nature, aimed at testing the allies' readiness to confront any North Korean
aggression.

Tension peaked on the Korean peninsula in March
2013 when the North ratcheted up rhetoric during the annual drills, with
Pyongyang threatening war and putting its forces in a state of combat
readiness.

Glenn Greenwald, Reading North Korea in US MEDIA

Reading North Korea in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by Dick Bennett. Reports by newspapers like the AD-G reflect a national mainstream perspective because this newspaper
employs both signed articles and articles drawn from other mainstream media
compiled by AD-G staff. I have not
analyzed (given an alternative account for) all of the reports, but I wanted to
show the uniformity of the larger sample.
Analyzed reports are indicated by an asterisk.

Hostile Reporting by Associated Press and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

This article, filling up half a page, hammers away
at NK brainwashing their children to despise the “Yankee imperialists” or
“American bastards” (“miguk nom”). “The
children run around beating up mock American soldiers and planes,” a teacher,
Jon, said. And reporter Lee writes: “For
North Koreans, the systematic indoctrination of anti-Americanism starts as early
as kindergarten and is as much a part of the curriculum as learning to
count.”

State instilling hate in children or
anybody is repulsive. But reporter Lee
fails to ask why the NK government would go to such extremes. Nor does she observe the less but still
powerful hate-mongering against NK by US mainstream media, including Lee’s
article. Doesn’t journalistic training
in the US teach reporters to seek at least two sides of an issue, where they
exist?

This major absence in Lee’s article
reminded me of one half of John Gower’s book, War Without Mercy, which reports how the imperial Japanese
war-mongers in power during WWII taught their population dehumanizing images
and views of the US people. But the
other half of Gower’s book shows the US propagandizing similar denigrations of
the Japanese. WWII was a war without
compassion on both sides. And the
conflict between NK and the US exhibits a similar absence of sympathetic
imagination. NK’s hostility is expressed
more intensely. But let’s inquire why
that is.

Again comparison with Japan/US history
illuminates NK/US. A complex history
preceded both the war against Japan and the present conflict with NK, ignorance
of which skews perception and judgment.
In No Choice But War Roland
Worth, Jr., explains how US colonial competition with Japan over control of
natural resources in the Pacific and East Asia led to the US/UK embargo of
imports into Japan that led directly to Pearl Harbor. And racism was deeply involved (part of the
later merciless war), for the US cooperated with the French, British, and Dutch
empires in East Asia, but opposed the Japanese.
At least, knowledge of events leading up to WWII in the Pacific qualifies
such lethal slogans as “stab in the back” in describing the attack on Pearl in
1941. --Dick

NK’S
ANNOUNCEMENT OF HYDROGEN BOMB TESTING AN OPPORTUNITY FOR PEACE by Dick Bennett. A Discussion of “Nuke Test Sets Off Boos, Doubts:
North Korea Blast Said Not Up to the Level of an H-Bomb.” Compiled by wire
reports by staff of the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette (January 7, 2016), 1A, 6A.

I.Reaction of World Powers to North Korea’s Hydrogen
Bomb Test

The “world
powers” reacted to NK’s declared hydrogen bomb test in two ways: skepticism,
condemnation, and threatened violence.
None is helpful in quelling NK’s military preparations. A dismissed hydrogen bomb test claim will
only inflame President Kim Jong Un.
But for its own danger the hydrogen claim ought to be treated not with
scoffing but with the utmost concern.
Every attempt possible to send a UN inspection team should be utilized.

And condemnation has been tried and tried
year after year, decade after decade, by those same “world powers” without
success.

And sanctions aplenty. Now the U.N. Security Council in an
emergency session declared it would “take ‘further significant measures” with
“new sanctions. . .in light of ‘the gravity of the violation.’” This fourth nuclear test since 2006, in the
words of UK Ambassador Rycroft was “’a reckless challenge to international
norms of behavior and the authority of the U.N. Security Council.” US Ambassador Samantha Power said “the
international community must respond with ‘steadily increasing pressure.’”

But this
will avail nothing. Following UK’s third
test on Feb. 12, 2013, the UN applied four rounds of sanctions “aimed at
reigning in the North’s nuclear and missile development, but Pyongyang has
ignored them and moved ahead with programs to modernize its ballistic missiles
and nuclear weapons.” Japan’s U.N.
Ambassador “said the Security Council will hurt its credibility if it fails to
swiftly adopt a new resolution imposing ‘significant’ new measures against
Pyongyang.” And “leaders from across
the region and around the world denounced the test.” “South Korean
President Park Geun-hye ordered the military to bolster its combined defense posture with
U.S. forces.” Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe said, ‘We absolutely cannot allow this.’” China’s Ministry of foreign Affairs
“denounced the tests” and pushed for “’denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula.’” But neither China nor
Russia have supported more sanctions now, so far, such as restricting a “key
procurement company” and limiting “the travel of senior North Korean
officials.”

Even if all the nations denounced and
demanded and threatened, the results will be, as in the past, unavailing.

Now US Pentagon Secretary Ashton Carter
and his SK counterpart, Han Min-Koo, were reported to have “agreed a North
Korean nuclear test would be an ‘unacceptable and irresponsible provocation.” Carter “reaffirmed “ US “commitment to defend
South Korea, which he said includes ‘all aspects of the United States’ extended
deterrence—referring to a long-standing U.S. promise to defend South Korea with
nuclear weapons if necessary.”

The US has used many kinds and intensities
of denunciations, sanctions, and armed threats to compel NK to do its bidding. (See extensive documentation in preceding
newsletters.). Despite all this, NK
continued to build rockets and now claims to have the tech for a hydrogen
bomb. In response the “world powers”
have denounced, sanctioned, and threatened.
Insanity is repeating the same behavior expecting a different result?

The people of this world need new ways of
dealing with NK nuclear weapons. If the
threat of the world’s armed force has failed to persuade the leaders of NK,
surely finally it’s time to try another method. It’s time to try peace force. This is our opportunity.

II. What’s It
Look Like from Pyongyang?

In its final section, “North
Cites Defense,” the newspaper attempted, in journalistic give-both-sides
professionalism, to explain NK’s reasons for building a hydrogen bomb. But it lasted for only three sentences,
trying to see the world as an enemy sees it an unfamiliar task for US leaders and
the mainstream media. “North Korea’s
state media called the test a self-defense measure against a potential U.S.
attack. ‘The [country’s] access to
H-bomb of justice, standing against the U.S., the chieftain of aggression. .
.is the legitimate right of a sovereign state for self-defense and a very just
step no one can slander.’” A citizen is
quoted as saying, “’Since we have it, the U.S. will not attack us.” A large crowd is mentioned celebrating the
achievement.

The rest of the concluding
section, however, returns to the beginning two options of skepticism or
sanctions: How credible is the test claim? What is the magnitude of NK’s new
threat? What increase in punishment should the West apply? The article ends with the efforts to
determine the true nature of the test.

So the moment offers a
momentous opportunity to the peace movement to help turn such a dangerous
situation into peace. We could follow
many paths—that of Gandhi or King, for example, all of which would be better
than that of armed threatening, which has failed utterly. The path I will track here is that of J.
William Fulbright. The final chapter of
The Price of Empire (1989) is
entitled “Seeing the World as Others See It.”
Here he summarizes his philosophy of peace through education for empathy. The people of the world, and especially the
leaders of the great powers, must learn to feel and understand other people’s
cultures—why they think, react, and operate as they do. Earlier in the book Fulbright explains the
radical meaning of the empathic ABM treaty for peace: “Insofar as each side
abandons the effort to make itself invulnerable to attack or retaliation, it
also commits itself to peace and to the survival of the other’s power and
ideology” (30). In regard to nuclear
weapons, nations—again, particularly the leaders—must understand the necessity
of cooperation to survival. What Dr.
Jerome Frank recommended in regard to the Soviets, if we wished to survive, is
to “do the opposite of what we were then doing as a country; that instead of
challenging them on every occasion, we should seek out ways to do things
together” (194).

Opening with a reminder of the
NK invasion of SK in 1950 and the present “bluff after counter-bluff,” in a fit
of spleen the editor attacks “irresolute” President Obama , who “continues to
babble pointlessly even while assembling a great show of force,” criticizes our useless allies, and faintly
praises China for “abandoning” Pyongyang, proving “there is no honor among
aggressors.” What would the editor have
Obama do? Have a policy. He implies a resolute policy, yet he disdains
the President’s childish show of force, which the Kim Jong-Un particularly
dislikes. In fact President Obama is
following the old playbook of US strong-arm policy, threatening military shock
and awe which blocking more avenues of economic access and development, as the
US did with Cuba and other nations. Diplomacy? The US does not have formal diplomatic
relations with NK, the nation above all other nations with which it should be
talking. The
U.S. should be using every means to understand North Korea's paranoid, mercurial leader, Kim
Jong-Un, who interprets B-52s at his border as belligerent provocations,
planes that laid waste to NK cities during the Korean War and to Vietnam, Laos,
and Cambodia during the Vietnam War.. (Is Kim paranoid?)

Threatening and sanctioning
have failed to curb NK’s leader. Listen
to lthe peace movement. A peace policy
could resemble.the one suggested by Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain’s
opposition Labor Party, for the creation of a communications channel with the
Islamic State in hopes of ending the war in Syria,
imitating the one created with the Irish Republican Army that helped end the
conflict in Northern Ireland.

A peace policy could be
teaching both IS and US Muhammad’s policy of hilm—forbearance, patience, mercy. Before we bomb, have the combatants read the
life of Muhammad? Have our bombers from
Obama to stealth and drone pilots read a line of the Qur’an? Has our State Department organized meetings
of Muslims, Christians, Jews and others to try to understand IS? Karen Armstrong writes at the end of her
biography, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our
Time: “The Prophet, whose aim was
peace and practical compassion…” The US
should slaughter before trying to enable
surely the majority of Muslims who agree with their Prophet?

Antony
Blinken is the US voice for “tougher sanctions against North Korea at the U.N.
Security Council,” and he urges China to support them. NK must suffer “significant
consequences” “the early adoption of the
strongest resolution possible.” But surely most people of the world know the
nuclear bomb danger could be ended by the US agreeing to abolish its own. Unquestionably we all know we are in mortal
danger so long as the bombs exist. In
the meantime, the US huffs and puffs against an “enemy’s” nuclear arms, as
though the US presidents did not remember they had helped several nuclear
powers acquire them. The North Koreans
know it, fear it, and fear too the so far impregnable hypocrisy of US double
standards.

We also learn that SK had resumed
propaganda broadcasts across the border, and the US flew “a B-52 bomber south
of the border in a show of force.” And
NK? It offered to negotiate. It offered “to stop nuclear testing if the
U.S. suspends joint military drills with South Korea.” Score: US threatening and organizing for
punishment; NK open to discussion and not asking for much: just stop threatening us with your joint maneuvers. Blinken pluckily declared “the U.S. remained
open to dialogue, but would judge North Korea by its actions, not its words,”
just as Kim Jong Un was doing.

Eleven days after Kim Jong-Un claimed the
successful testing of a hydrogen bomb, the AD-G
published this tenth tenth article on the apparent feat. It was embellished by a painting of Kim
Jong-Un as a nuclear missile, for the subject of the article is North Korea’s
nuclear arsenal. As the title declares,
someone must contain the Problem—Kim Jong-Un. It’s a familiar scenario: remember Ho Chi
Minh. The “world’s most unpredictable
regime could credibly threaten South Korea, Japan, American forces in the
Pacific [Hawaii!] and, eventually, the West Coast of the United States”!! So: “What do you do with a problem like
North Korea?” He rejects “strategic
patience,” leading to “acquiescence.”
The State Department’s Sidney Seiler did prepare proposals for resuming
negotiations much like the process with Iran’s nuclear program. Stephen Bosworth, Obama’s special envoy for
North Korea, argued that if we could negotiate with Iran and Cuba we could meet
with Kim Jong-Un. But the initiative
“went nowhere.” Why? You know the answer. The administration “would not talk to North
Korea unless the North agreed” to “complete nuclear disarmament.”

So NK’s arms continue to increase and to
be improved, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction continues to expand,
and the threat to the US and its allies multiplies. “. . .nuclear weapons are the country’s
insurance policy.” Until, that is, it has assurances of safety from nuclear attack
from the country that has used a nuclear bomb twice and has threatened to use
them a dozen times. The country that is
producing improved weapons just for NK.
According to William Broad and David Sanger (The New York Times, AD-G 1-17-16, 2A), the first precision-guided atom
bomb built by the US “was designed with problems like North Korea in mind”
(tunnels). And to Kim Jong-Un, President
Obama is untrustworthy. (Let’s suppose
Kim Jong-Un knows what “cant” means.) President
Barack Obama advocates nuclear-zero, a ‘nuclear –free world,” but the US has
more bombs than the rest of the world combined. The
improvements do not nullify his “pledge to make no new nuclear arms,” yet the
new designs are new weapons. Obama
demands NK not acquire hydrogen bombs but does not offer to eliminate US
nuclear bombs. Obama’s officials argue
that modernized—more accurate and reliable--weapons will make “their use less
likely because of the threat they can pose, but that old argument from the
sixties covers up first strike capability.
The double-standard, arising from the arrogance of US “Exceptionalism,”
aggravates the entire world, but US power generally restrains overt opposition,
but not NK.

So what to do with the Problem? The peace movement has long offered solutions
never seriously tried by our NFSS. Former
Senator J. William Fulbright set forth the basic way: The US must “change our manner of thinking.” What he said about the Soviet Union (SU) and
the US applies equally well to NK and US:
“Soviet and American leaders are beginning to recognize the destructive
futility of the arms race and are beginning to see some advantages in
cooperation. . .in more peaceful, productive forms of competition” (The Price of Empire, “Afterword: On
Changing Our Manner of Thinking,” 225).

For research
purposes, specific subjects can be located in the following alphabetized index,
and searched on the blog using the search box. The search box is located
in the upper left corner of the webpage.Facebook:www.facebook.com/OMNIPeaceDept

WHAT
HAPPENED, WHAT’S HAPPENING?

Bruce Cumings, North Korea (2004)

Garner
(2010), Rev. of North Korea

Cumings’ LTE
NY Review of Books (2007)

Cumings, et
al., Inventing the Axis of Evil (2005)

Cumings: Korean War Games (2013)

Articles
from Google

NYT Op-Ed, 3/11/13, by
Amb. Donald Gregg, “Reach Out”

US MEDIA
ANALYSIS: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (9 articles examined)

Analysis of
media reporting requires knowing the subject.
My media criticism was made possible by Bruce Cumings’ research or that of similar
scholars independent of US dogmas and myths regarding “enemies.”

U.S. and S.
Korea Military Drills 2012

US/SK Drills
2013

US/SK Pact
Against NK Provocations

What Do You Do
With Crazy? Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Editorial (March 28,
2013)